Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles - The Pluto Campaign

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Product Description ------------------- Battling seemingly invincible forces primed to take over the universe, "Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles: The Pluto Campaign" is a state-of-the-art CGI feature length story that features elements of action, humor, coming-of-age, teamwork and fantasy. .com ---- Paul Verhoeven's dark, satirical adaptation of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers seriously strayed from the novel. This Verhoeven-produced TV series--part sequel, part remake, all CGI animated--hews closer to the spirit of the novel, a space-age twist on a World War II battle adventure. Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles--The Pluto Campaign is a mini-platoon epic comprised of the initial five episodes of the series, essentially a series of skirmishes and assignments leading up to the climactic confrontation at Bug City. The episodic nature works perfectly within this framework, and the mix of Marine grit ("No retreat, no surrender!"), jargon, and understated melodrama give a feel somewhere between the steely seriousness of an old-fashioned war comic book and the spectacle and romance of a Japanese anime space opera. The excellent voice cast includes the inimitable E.G. Daly (who also contributes to Rugrats and Powerpuff Girls) as the g-ho Private "Dizzy" Flores. The CGI animation is less ambitious than in such feature films as Toy Story, but it's one of the most impressive examples of the animation made for TV. The detailed designs, rich textures, 3-D modeling, and awesome sense of scale (not to mention the pumped-up action and whiplash speed of the bug army) give it the look of an impossibly sophisticated video game, with the rat-a-tat editing and soaring camerawork of a Hollywood movie. The budgetary shortcuts are evident in moments of blurring and jerking, but overall it's startlingly effective. The PG-level violence (no humans are killed, only demonic-looking bugs) may not be appropriate for younger viewers, but it's ed at an older crowd and has won a loyal adult following. --Sean Axmaker